Meet me where i'm gazing

Abstract

In this paper we provide empirical evidence that using humanlike gaze cues during human-robot handovers can improve the timing and perceived quality of the handover event. Handovers serve as the foundation of many human-robot tasks. Fluent, legible handover interactions require appropriate nonverbal cues to signal handover intent, location and timing. Inspired by observations of human-human handovers, we implemented gaze behaviors on a PR2 humanoid robot. The robot handed over water bottles to a total of 102 naïve subjects while varying its gaze behaviour: no gaze, gaze designed to elicit shared attention at the handover location, and the shared attention gaze complemented with a turntaking cue. We compared subject perception of and reaction time to the robot-initiated handovers across the three gaze conditions. Results indicate that subjects reach for the offered object significantly earlier when a robot provides a shared attention gaze cue during a handover. We also observed a statistical trend of subjects preferring handovers with turn-taking gaze cues over the other conditions. Our work demonstrates that gaze can play a key role in improving user experience of human-robot handovers, and help make handovers fast and fluent.

Impacts of Robot Head Gaze on Robot-to-Human Handovers

“…Results from this study indicate that when the robot continually displays face gaze during the handover, participants reach for the object even earlier than when only the shared attention gaze is displayed. In addition, this study reaffirmed the finding from the first robot-to-human handover study [34] that participants prefer conditions with face gaze over conditions without it.…”

“…In our earlier work [34] we demonstrated that when the robot gazes at the handover position (a location where the handover is projected to happen) continually during the handover (shared attention gaze), participants reach for the offered object significantly earlier than when this gaze cue is absent during the interaction. However, if the robot displays a variation of this gaze cue, i.e.…”

“…To assist robot-to-human handover and gaze design, we carried out a human-human handover study (see [34] for procedures). Below we describe findings from analysis of annotated video recordings of this study.…”

“…To further investigate participants' reaching and gaze behaviors from [34], we conducted a frame-by-frame analysis of video recordings from this study. Results from this analysis [46] suggest that the timing of the robot's face gaze, along with the shared attention gaze, seems to affect participants' reaching motion.…”

Can Children Take Advantage of Nao Gaze-Based Hints During GamePlay?

“…Yamazaki et al [35] also demonstrated the importance of gaze timing in turn-taking interactions. Also, in a handover setting where the robot handed bottles to human subjects, [25] empirical evidence reveals that gaze cues can improve hand over timing and the subjective evaluation of the robot.…”